An amorphous alloy has splendid magnetic characteristics and thus is used as a material of a magnetic core of an electric power distribution device or a transformer, or as a material of a magnetic core of an electronic/electrical circuit.
A transformer using an amorphous alloy for a magnetic core is referred to as an “amorphous transformer”. In an amorphous transformer, the loss of an electric current caused when no load is applied is suppressed to about ⅓ of that in a transformer using an electromagnetic steel plate for a magnetic core. Therefore, an amorphous transformer has been used more and more as a transformer fulfilling the recent requirement for energy savings.
In general, an amorphous transformer has a life of about 20 to 30 years. Therefore, in North America and Japan, in which amorphous transformers started to be used widely about 20 years ago, the amorphous transformers have recently been started to be discarded or replaced with new ones.
The life of an amorphous transformer is usually determined by the degree of deterioration of insulating oil in which the magnetic core and the coil of the transformer are immersed. Deteriorated insulating oil needs to be discarded, but components and materials other than the insulating oil may be recycled.
In such a situation, an appropriate recycle technology for amorphous transformers and the like is desired to be established.
In order to realize this, the present applicant stated in Nikkei Press Release dated Feb. 28, 2013 (Non-patent Document 1) that the present applicant would run a recycle plant to perform crushing, magnetic separation, cleaning and drying of used amorphous magnetic cores and thus to manufacture a material of an amorphous alloy from the used magnetic cores, which were conventionally discarded.
In a study on recycling amorphous transformers, it has been proposed to put an amorphous magnetic core directly into an electric furnace in order to recycle the amorphous magnetic core into ferro-boron, which is a main material of the amorphous alloy (Non-patent Document 2).